Encrypted
by chocoscar55
Summary: With a terrorist threat known only as "Requiem" threatening the safety of the world, the Avengers decide to bring a British super spy into their ranks. Will Margrette be the key to stopping the threat? Or will her reluctance to divulge the secrets of her past be the reason for Requiem's victory? Possible pairings later on. Rated T because I'm paranoid.
1. The Beginning

Margrette awoke to a gentle breeze and a soft, resounding _thump_ right in front of her bunk. Her eyelids fluttered open and quickly found her roommate, Natasha crouching on the floor, her dark red curls sticking out at odd angles, framing her face in a rather humorous way.

"You're up early," Margrette yawned, sitting up and rubbing sleep out of her eyes. Natasha shrugged, heading to one of the two trunks on the far wall of the shared room, tossing it open and squinting at the contents inside. "Uh, Tash? That's my trunk." Natasha shut it quickly.

"Right, sorry. My mistake." She fumbled with the sticky latch on her own trunk until it opened.

"You always say that," Margrette muttered, swinging her legs over the edge of her bottom bunk. "But you make that 'mistake' every morning." She narrowed her eyes at Natasha's back. "I'm beginning to think that you're just a snoop!" Her accusation might have been a bit more convincing had she not giggled.

Natasha whirled around, uniform tucked under her arm, staring at Margrette with a look of mock hurt. "Me, a snoop?" She gasped. "Oh, Meg. Surely you jest!"

"Says the stalker assassin."

"Says the _master spy_."

"Touché."

Natasha smirked. "C'mon, get dressed. We have that meeting at seven and you know how Fury gets when we're late." Margrette nodded and swung her legs over the edge of her bunk as Natasha disappeared into the small, adjacent bathroom. Margrette heard the shower sputter to life as she dug through her trunk. She pulled a clean S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform out, along with a pair of dark socks. She dressed quickly, slipping into the tight black uniform. She was just pulling her long, chestnut hair into a tight bun on the back of her head as Natasha emerged, showered, dressed, and working a comb through her damp curls. "You about ready?" She asked.

"Just about." Margrette grabbed her boots from their place by the door, lacing them up with deft fingers before pressing her thumb to the control pad on the door frame. The metal door slid open with a hiss as Margrette snatched her I.D. from the hook on the wall. With that, she strode out into the long residential hallway of the helicarrier with Natasha on her heels.

"We have twenty minutes until we need to be up in the conference room," Natasha said, checking her watch.

"Great," Margrette sighed. "Then I'm going to hit the research floor for a cup of tea. The lounge there has the best selection."

"It's not like you're going to get anything different than usual," Natasha snorted, knowing of her friend's affinity for English Breakfast tea.

"Yeah, yeah. Shut up." Margrette waved her hand dismissively as she stopped at the elevator. She jammed her thumb on the UP button.

"Alright, you do that and I'll go get Clint. Somehow I doubt he's up yet."

"Okay. See you at the meeting." She gave her roommate a small wave before stepping into the elevator and taking it up to the research level. She quickly made her way to the level's break room; the one adjacent to the large research lab. She grabbed a pale green mug from the counter and plucked a packet of English Breakfast tea from the basket. She headed to the hot water dispenser and busied herself with her tea, stirring honey and lemon juice into it to finish it off. She took a seat on one of the black leather couches, savoring the heat of the mug against her palms. The research level was always at least ten degrees colder than the other levels of the helicarrier. She heard shuffling behind her and turned to face the man who had just come from the lab.

"Good morning, Dr. Banner," She chirped, much more at ease now that she had her morning tea.

He merely grunted, reaching for a mug of his own and a packet of tea. He had huge, dark circles under his eyes. Margrette stared at him as he poured his water and dropped the tea bag in, ignoring the sugar and honey altogether. She wondered if he had slept at all.

As if in answer, Dr. Banner turned towards her, staring into the yellow mug in his hand. "I was working in the lab all night. Requiem's gamma signatures are harder to track than your cellphone was after Tony set that stupid high pitched keen as your default ringtone." He cringed at the memory of the noise.

Margrette groaned. "Don't remind me. I still need to get back at him for that." She paused. "Wait. You were up all night? You know, Dr. Banner, for someone with a P.H.D., you really don't take very good care of yourself at all."

The corner of his mouth twitched in exhausted amusement. "Margrette, I know I've told you many times to call me Bruce. You're a part of our team. You don't need to use those silly formalities with me."

Margrette smiled mid sip, hiding her blush behind the rim of her mug. "Sorry Bruce. I guess it's just habit. I heard so much about you before we met that you were just set in my mind with all formalities attached."

Bruce nodded. "I see," he mumbled, taking a sip of his tea. Margrette could smell it from where she sat. Earl Grey.

She glanced at her watch idly. "Oh, we have to get going!"

"We?" Bruce looked at her questioningly.

She nodded. "We have a meeting up in the conference room in five."

"Yes, that's right. I guess there's no time to waste then." He held his hand out to her. "Shall we?"

She smiled and took his hand jauntily. She stood, and together they headed to the elevator as fast as they could without spilling their hot tea, holding their hands to the rims of their mugs and laughing at each other's modified movements to avoid splashing it onto the floor. They made it to the main floor conference room just in time, Margrette a few short feet ahead of Bruce. Fury nodded to her curtly, handing her the file she had completed and handed in a short twelve hours ago. She quietly took her seat and glanced around the long table.

Director Fury and Steve Rogers sat at opposite ends with Natasha at Fury's right. She was desperately trying to keep Clint awake as he periodically slumped downward toward the surface of the table. Margrette could see his internal struggle for consciousness from her seat directly across from him. _I guess he's just not an early bird, _she thought, quietly laughing at her own joke.

"Something funny, Agent Jinks?" Director Fury stared her down with his one good eye. As usual, he was in no mood to be trifled with.

She deadpanned immediately, shrinking down between Bruce and Thor. "No, sir." She mumbled, averting her eyes. Thor raised an eyebrow at her as he crammed two Pop-Tarts in his mouth at once. She shook her head and looked away from him, suddenly taking notice of the empty space at the table.

Bruce sat in his place on Steve's right, but on the Captain's left sat a single empty chair. Fury pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "_Where_ is Stark?" he asked, annoyed.

Suddenly the large doors slid open and in strolled the billionaire in question, looking very relaxed in a rumpled t-shirt and jeans. "Sorry I'm late," he called to Fury. "I had a... thing." Steve sighed and shook his head as Tony walked to his seat.

"Oh! Almost forgot. Hey, Mags. heads up!" He pulled an apple from somewhere on his person-conjured it really- and tossed it to her. She caught it with ease, admiring the pink and yellow skin. "Thanks, Tony!"

Everyone on the team knew that Margrette's intense love for apples was greater than anything she felt for English Breakfast tea, however Tony and Bruce were the only ones who gave them to her. Tony winked as he sat down and Fury dropped a messy looking file in front of him. "Alright. Now that everyone is _here_," Fury announced, glaring at Tony. "We can begin. We have a lot to discuss."


	2. The Meeting

Director Fury took a deep breath before he began. "As you all know, we recently received word of a new terrorist organization. They call themselves 'Requiem.'"

"Requiem," Steve looked up from his hands. "You mean like-"

"A mass for the repose of the dead." Thor rumbled. The name made everyone's blood run cold. Margrette clenched her fingers around her apple until her knuckles turned white. No one seemed to notice.

"Correct," Director Fury went on. "They were said to be working with some kind of radiation, mainly gamma, however- and Dr. Banner you will want to take note of this- there has been reason to believe they are actually working with a mysterious chemical compound. Unfortunately the components of this compound are still unknown. So Dr. Banner, there is in fact a reason that our scans for gamma radiation have turned up no results."

Bruce nodded, opened his file, pulled a pen from his pocket and scribbled something on one of the papers. "If I may," Bruce began. "I would like to know how we got a hold of this information."

It was Margrette's turn to open her file. "About a month ago, after the identical deaths of the American businessman, the German high school student and the unemployed Swede we found a flash drive in the vehicle each person was killed in-"

Tony cut her off. "I'm sorry, how did they die?"

Margrette looked at him a moment. "We have no idea. There was no trace of any chemical or radiation anywhere, but they were all bright red as if they had died of carbon monoxide poisoning." She paused. "Anyway, after downloading all of the information from all three flash drives, putting them in order of time of death, we found a strange code. This, of course being the Arabic message we discussed when the first mention of Requiem came about. It was a tedious challenge, though nothing more than child's play. After putting it into Pig Latin they ran it through a shift cipher, then turned it into a twisted cryptogram, before finally switching all translatable letters to Arabic. It mentioned gamma radiation and Requiem and something about Glasgow, but even then it seemed too easy," She muttered, ignoring the incredulous stare from Steve. "Then, last week we received a message from an unknown source. Unknown-" She raised her hand to keep Tony from speaking. "because when I tried to track the source of the message, the computer shorted out and set its own hard drive on fire. I do apologize again, Director."

"You were doing your_ job_, Agent Jinks. There's nothing to be sorry for."

She nodded. "Luckily I saved the message to a different computer just in case something of that sort happened. This one was so much harder to decrypt, I couldn't believe it was from the same organization. It required two algorithms and thirty-six straight hours in front of the computer before I finally got the damned thing to make sense." She pulled a piece of paper from her file and read aloud:

**"Children of SHIELD say gamma and Glasgow. How would an English woman do it? -E.H."**

"England?" Natasha looked at Margrette quizzically. "Are they-"

"Taking a jab at the British hacker?" Margrette finished her thought. "I thought about it, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Look at the initials at the end. This organization is called 'Requiem,' but these initials that serve as the signature to the message seem to have nothing to do with the name. Plus, there's no way that someone who was smart and careful enough to put me through that decryption marathon would be _stupid_ enough to sign it with their own initials, so it must be some kind of reference or clue."

"Reference," Clint muttered. "Like literary, or..."

She pointed at him with the paper she held in her hand. "Exactly. After some research I found a short story by Ernest Hemingway called 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.' At the very end of the story," She glanced down at her paper. "One of the characters said 'Why didn't you poison him? That's what they do in England.'" Everyone in the room stiffened.

"We deduced then, that they had some poisonous chemical substance instead," said Fury. "After we received the second message, we realized that the first one from the flash drives was merely a decoy for the authorities to find."

Thor looked up at fury, his brow furrowed. "I don't understand. If they set up a decoy for the authorities, then why send a message directly to S.H.I.E.L.D. to tell them what they are really doing?"

"They realized that they caught S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attention and decided to go come looking for a challenge," Tony muttered. "'Children of S.H.I.E.L.D.'? They mean to rile us up and see if we'll actually bother ourselves with them."

"And we will," Steve said decidedly. "We can't afford to do otherwise." Everyone nodded in agreement.

The meeting went on in a mosh pit of sharing information and planning. After looking at the broken computer, Tony determined that the particular self-destruct program used had been used in the past by enemy organizations from France and Italy. After some discussion, it was then determined that Clint and Natasha, with the help of Tony, would do research to pinpoint certain regions of the two countries before the pair were to travel by jet to the determined regions for investigative field work. Then, after narrowing their options to at most three possible locations, Margrette and Steve would infiltrate each one for further investigation. The results of the investigations would then determine their next course of action. After agreeing to meet up again in three days, the meeting was adjourned.

Margrette watched Clint and Natasha leave quickly, urgency in their step as they followed Tony out of the conference room. Bruce sifted through the papers in his file for a moment before leaving, muttering something about chemical research and carbon monoxide. Thor had been the first to leave, the lure of food in the break room proving very tempting to the Asgardian. With a nod to director Fury, she rose from her seat and left, making the unconscious decision to go to the main floor lounge. She was so caught up in her blank thoughts that she was almost completely unaware of the footsteps following close behind her.

_Almost._

She debated turning around but she knew exactly who it was and ultimately decided against risking idle hallway small talk. She made her way to the lounge, which was lined with leather couches, tables stacked with magazines and newspapers, and four flat screen televisions, one on each wall. It appeared that everyone whose duties were on the main floor was currently on shift, as the lounge was completely deserted. Fury must have sent out the order for their change of course. She grabbed the nearest newspaper and flopped down on one of the sofas. She stretched her legs out across the cushions and reached for the table behind her, finding the cup for pens and pencils empty. A quick glance around the room yielded the same results. She sighed and opened to the comic section of the newspaper. She heard the hiss of the door and peeked over the edge of her paper in time to see Steve enter the room.

"So you decided to follow me all the way here after all," She said casually.

The Captain shrugged. "Well, since Stark took Barton and Romanoff to work and Bruce ran down to lock himself in the lab, it was either follow you or go watch Thor stuff his face. And as tempting as the latter sounds...

Margrette chuckled. "Well, then I'm honored, Captain. Would you happen to have a pen? Trillions of dollars of equipment on this helicarrier and the only thing anyone seems hellbent on stealing are writing utensils."

Steve smirked, pulling a pen from his pocket. She thanked him as he handed it to her and she lifted her feet to free a seat for him, putting them back down in his lap as soon as he was seated. He turned slightly pink and she smirked, flipping to the puzzle section of the paper. She twirled the pen between her fingers and set to work on the Sudoku puzzle. Steve watched her scratch a 5 into the center square in black ink.

"So... what do you think of this 'Requiem' business?"

She paused, pen hovering over the paper for a moment before continuing her work. "Hard to say."

"How do you mean?"

"All we know is encrypted messages, poison, not gamma rays, three dead people and maybe Italy or France."

"And?"

"And we have no idea what all of that information even means! Unless Fury's not telling us something."

"Believe me," Steve said, shaking his head. "If we know almost nothing, Fury knows the rest."

"That doesn't really make me feel better," Margrette uttered after a humorless laugh. She glanced up from her paper and found Steve looking at her intently. "What?"

"Margrette, if it ever comes down to either telling you the truth or making you feel better, I will always be honest with you, and I hope you do the same for me." His words were heavy with meaning.

She nodded. "Of course, Steve." She returned to her puzzle, hesitantly filling in the numbers. Her eyelids grew heavy, the puzzle relaxing her nerves the way she needed it to.

She wasn't sure when she fell asleep, but when she woke up she was back in her bunk. She yawned and knocked on the underside of the upper bunk to see if Natasha was there.

"Oh, you're awake." The bunk creaked as Natasha leapt down nimbly, landing in a crouching position on the floor. She turned and sat cross-legged on the floor. "You certainly made an entrance earlier."

Margrette looked at her, confused. "What do you mean?"

"Well Clint, Stark and I were all working in one of the offices, getting basic information on the program, how to track it, extra information from director Fury, then Stark gave us laptops and sent us off to work."

"Yeah?"

"Well, I had come here to work and I hadn't been here for more than ten minutes before the door opened." She laughed. "And in comes Steve, _carrying_ you. And you were _out cold._"

"Oh god..." Margrette groaned. "How bad?"

"Oh, not terrible." Natasha waved her hand. "No snoring. You were drooling a bit though. He set you down on your bunk, put your I.D. up on the hook and left. I don't even think he realized I was there." She chuckled.

"What? Why?"

"I dunno. He was watching you pretty carefully the whole time."


	3. The Match

Three days later, the team met up again for their meeting. Much to no one's surprise, they had almost nothing. No new message had come for Margrette to decipher (which left her more white-knuckled than she cared to admit), Bruce's search for chemicals that may have caused the 'triplet deaths' as they called them had turned out no results, and Tony was currently running extra tests on the burnt hard drive to see if they could find anything at all that could help them. There was a vacant seat once again, and it would remain so, it seemed. Thor suddenly had some duties to attend to on Asgard, so they would have to resolve the situation without the hungry Thunder God.

The only advancement was made by Natasha and Clint. With minor assistance from Tony and Margrette they had managed to trace certain computer codes using the vague signature of the self-destruct program. They had brought it down to a handful of ten-square-mile areas in Italy and France. Arrangements were then quickly made for a jet to take them to their respective countries- Clint to France, and Natasha to Italy- early the following morning. At that, they decided to join Tony since his own research was proving futile. Natasha went back to her room to set herself up for her trip, and Steve went to take a walk.

"Try to stay awake all afternoon, ma'am." He whispered in her ear on the way out.

She scowled, her face flushed, and swatted halfheartedly at the super soldier. He chuckled and strode out the door.

"Hey, Jinks," Her head snapped up to see Clint, standing over her chair with a friendly grin. "I think I'm gonna head down and let off some steam before tomorrow," he said. "Care to join me for some sparring?"

Margrette gave him a small smile and nodded. "Sure. I think that'll do both of us some good," she said, jumping up eagerly. Clint gave a quick exhale of a laugh at her enthusiasm before turning and heading out the door.

She followed a couple of feet behind him, wondering why he had chosen her to spar with and not someone he was closer to, like maybe Steve. She definitely talked to him the least of anyone on the team, but she definitely found him interesting. His steely eyes always seemed to spark with a strange, deadpan humor and he had a sarcastic streak that- on the days he decided to use it- even rivaled Tony Stark's. They found the elevator quickly and took it down to the training level. They didn't bother with small talk, instead opting for a comfortable silence. They didn't need unnecessary words to make up for rarely speaking to each other during the past few months; they would learn more about each other in a ten minute practice fight than they would in several hours of conversation.

They arrived at the training facility and headed straight to the sparring ring, all but ignoring the other agents who ran treadmills, lifted weights, shot at targets, the usual. Margrette yanked a pair of fingerless leather gloves from the pocket of her jacket and strapped them on. Clint put his calloused hand on the low wall of the sparring arena and used it to vault himself over and onto the smooth, rubbery mat within. Margrette shook her head and inserted her I.D. into a slot onto the wall of the ring. A gate swung open and she casually strolled into the arena like a normal person. Clint smirked, a bemused smirk in his eye.

"You ready?" It wasn't a question. It was a challenge.

Margrette nodded. "Don't hold back," she said, taking her stance. That was all Clint needed to hear. He took his own stance at the other end of the padded ring and eyed her up and down, searching for a weakness. Finding no holes in her current stance, he decided he would have to create one. Lifting his right foot slightly, he slid the ball of his foot across the red mat and began the dangerous circling. He could tell from her carefully chosen solid stance that she would hate movement, but she had no choice but to follow the pattern he wove into the floor. She eyed him warily, sly caution showing in the curve of her eyebrow. She stepped quietly, barely making a sound. Her sharp, fox like features cast eerie shadows on the curves of her face, carefully hiding her expression. Suddenly, Clint saw it. She had stepped a mere inch too far. Without warning, the hawk dove in for his prey. Margrette almost didn't see it coming and barely managed to brace herself as he swept in under her leg, snatching her ankle and pulling up sharply. She bent forward, hands hitting the mat solidly, fingers spread out. She shifted most of her weight to her hands and used Clint's hold on her ankle to lift her other foot and kick Clint in the side. He dropped her leg immediately and she kicked forward into a walkover. Pulling her torso up in line with her hips she turned to face Clint, narrowly dodging his fist. It grazed her cheek and they both felt the tremble in the air. She grabbed his wrist, smirking at the way his eyes widened, not believing he had made such a huge mistake, and twisted it until he was completely turned around. She jumped on his back and wrapped her arms around his neck, putting him into a headlock. Barely able to turn his head and carrying his opponent on his back, he stumbled around, eventually falling back on the mat. Margrette hit first, with Clint landing heavily on top of her. Her arms and legs burst open, allowing Clint to roll off. She scrambled to her feet, trying to make her lungs work properly again. Air rushed into her lungs just as Clint launched himself at her from the floor, and for a while, fox and hawk battled fiercely for dominance. Kicks and punches flew from every direction, each carefully planned in less time than it takes to blink and each so perfectly executed that it almost looked like a dance.

They began to learn each other's style. Clint was solid, yet jumpy. He would burst in for a barrage of attacks and then quickly flit out of harms way. Margrette had a more defensive way of fighting, nimbly sidestepping Clint's advances until he was so frustrated that he could hardly see straight. She would wait until his next big lunge and dive headlong into him, turning a scuffle into an explosive brawl. Suddenly, Clint got an arm around Margrette's waist and threw her across the ring. Her back hit the low wall with a harsh _bang_ and she gritted her teeth in pain, fingers gripping the edge of the wall until her knuckles were white. Clint closed the space between them in three strides and held his forearm to her throat. She, red faced and panting, rested her chin on it, hanging her head in defeat. Clint smirked and started to pull away, not noticing the determined glint in her eye before it was too late. Her leg came up, foot resting on his shoulder. Securing her position, she sprung up, her weight knocking him to the ground, pulling her foot away in time to land, straddling Clint's stomach. She heard the air rush out of his lungs, and it took him a moment for him to breathe properly again.

"That was a dirty trick," he gasped, craning his neck up to look at the young woman perched victoriously on top of him.

She shrugged and stood shakily, holding out a hand to help him up. "Real fights are full of those." Her voice was breathy.

Grinning, he took her hand and pulled himself up. "Care for a rematch?"

She shook her head. "Not until you get back. No need to exhaust you before you leave for France." He nodded and they exited the ring, heading their separate ways. Clint to his room to pack, Margrette to the break room for some water. She entered the room, dragging a small towel over her face and snatched a bottle from the fridge. Coming out of the room she saw Steve over by the punching bags. She waved and smiled at him and he returned the favor before turning and going to town on the enormous punching bag in front of him.

She watched him with a mixture of awe and fear. Fighting Clint was one thing, but steve was something entirely different. Enormous muscles rippling beneath his plain, white t-shirt, a determination that she could see matched her own, she suddenly felt comforted by the notion that he would be the one going with her to infiltrate Requiem's base.

_Requiem. _

She shuddered, and the memories that came with the name were immediately suppressed and carefully tucked away with the nearly imperceptible shake.

She considered telling the rest of the team the truth about her, but Fury insisted she stay silent on the matter, as it would only create unnecessary distrust in the team. She didn't know anything of any use anyway, but she still felt the need to tell them, get it off her chest, instead of anxiously waiting alone for the next message, praying for news.

"Colin," she whispered, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing everything back. When she regained her composure, she straightened, turned, and left the gym, not even noticing that Steve had watched her go, a look of concern etched into his features.


End file.
